A Pair of Smoked Chuck Roasts

A Pair of Smoked Chuck Roasts

This recipe will produce a pair of smoked chuck roasts with one sweet and spicy and the other.. savory only. It's a great way to serve smoked chuck roast and give your guests a choice of flavors while using the same cut of meat. I am also going to show you how using brown butcher paper to wrap the meat is better than foil.

Barbecue's Greatest Secret.. My Original Rub Recipe!

It's not often that I put out recipes that use both of my rub recipes but in this tandem delight, you will get to do just that. Luckily, when you purchase the original rub recipe, you also get the Texas style rub recipe. These two will work for almost everything you'll every want to cook in your smoker. Talk about versatile!

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Note: This dry brining process simply seasons the inside of the meat and because it works so well, I recommend it highly. I don't like things overly salty and this creates a very well balanced, perfectly seasoned piece of meat throughout. I still use my rubs on the outside and it balances very well with the seasoning that is inside.

Place the chuck roasts on a cookie sheet or a couple of plates and sprinkle kosher salt onto the top sides. There's no specific top or bottom so whichever side is facing up will be deemed the top side.

When you dry brine, you don't want to completely cover the meat with salt but you don't want to be scared to use it either. Be generous but not too generous.

You can see the salt coverage by looking at the picture below.

Once the salt is added, set the plates uncovered into the fridge for about 2 hours.

After only about 20 minutes or so, the salt will be completely melted and the slurry that has formed on the top will begin to be drawn into the meat.

Dry Brine – Side 2

After a 2 hour dry brining process on the “top” side, we'll remove the meat from the fridge, flip it over and add the same generous portion of salt to the new side.

The 2nd side of this dry brining process can go anywhere from 4 hours to overnight. Mine was overnight so I went ahead and just placed them in a bowl with a lid. You could also just use the same plates you used for side 1.

Apply the Rubs

It is usually important to use something on the meat to help the rub to stick better. The list of things that you can use is long and exhaustive but some of my favorites are olive oil and yellow mustard.

Brush oil onto the top and sides of one of the chuck roasts then do the same with yellow mustard onto the other one. It is now set and stone which one will be the sweet and spicy and which one will be savory only.

Sprinkle a healthy dose of my Texas style rub onto the oiled chuck roast making sure to get the rub on the top as well as the sides of the roast.

Apply the Jeff's original rub to the mustard coated chuck roast. Once again be sure to apply it to the top and the sides.

Let the meat sit until it begins to get a “wet” look meaning the rub is absorbing some of the juices from the meat and then flip them over to apply rub to the bottom side.

You can also just set the chuck roasts right on the smoker grate. I just put a new door on my Bradley digital 4-rack smoker and cleaned the smoke generator and decided to use it for this run. It's old and has some crazy temperature swings but it works quite well considering.

Let them smoke cook for 4 hours or until they reach about 160°F. This time will vary depending on how thick the roasts are and how cold they are when they first go into the smoker. If you have the “Smoke” thermometer by Thermoworks, you can just set an alarm to let you know once that temperature is acquired.

So what's the big deal about wrapping in paper vs. wrapping with foil or just placing it in a foil pan?

When you wrap briskets, chuck roasts, etc. in foil, the meat ends up very moist but you can tell it's been braised. This is because of all the steaming action that happens inside the foil.. it just can't breathe.

With the paper, it is able to breathe while still holding in some of the moisture to keep it from drying out. It even lets a little smoke through and the paper does a great job of soaking up any extra grease.

With paper, the bark remains firm instead of soft and mushy like it does with foil.

Many famous barbecue restaurants use paper during the last few hours of cooking briskets and for holding them.. they do this because it works very well.

So there you have it, try using brown kraft paper if you haven't and It think you'll love the results you get.

Once you get the chuck roasts wrapped in paper, poke the thermometer probe through the paper into the meat so you'll know exactly when the meat is finished.

Finish and Slice/Pull

Continue to cook the chuck roasts wrapped in the smoker until they reach about 200°F.

At this point, it is best if you can hold them in a empty ice chest or let the heat in the smoker decrease to about 150-170°F and hold them there for a couple of hours. This resting period is almost magical and does wonders for large cuts like brisket, pork butt and even chuck roasts.

Note: you can also set your oven to 170°F and let the smoked chuck roasts rest in there, still wrapped in paper and on a sheet pan of course.

See how the paper soaked up a lot of the juice. In turn it sort of self bastes during the resting period.. these babies were juicy!

After the resting period, remove them from the paper and slice the chuck roast across the grain with a very sharp knife or you can pull/chop the meat for pulled beef sandwiches.

Mine was literally fall-apart tender which is what I wanted and the flavor was absolutely incredible.. I was literally salivating while I took the pictures.

Be sure to let me know whether you liked the Texas style or the original sweet and spicy best. I think I prefer the original over the Texas style this time but it's a very close call.

AND.. we are running a limited-time 30% off sale on the DOWNLOADABLE RECIPES ONLY. Click HERE to purchase the instantly downloadable recipes (formulas) for both of my rubs and barbecue sauce for the lowest price I've EVER offered. Somebody pinch me! Or better yet, just go get them 😉
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"Love the original rib rub and sauce! We have an annual rib fest competition at the lake every 4th of July. I will say we have won a great percent of the time over the past 15 years so we are not novices by any means. However, we didn't win last year and had to step up our game! We used Jeff's rub and sauce (sauce on the side) and it was a landslide win for us this year! Thanks Jeff for the great recipes. I'm looking forward to trying the Texas style rub in the near future!" ~Michelle M.

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Have done beef chuck roasts in the past and nudged them to the 200F range, but without the pink butcher paper. Seemed even at low smoker temp they could easily be dry and tough. After seeing the Franklin videos, its use at a smoker shop class and your recipes, I just had to get some of the butcher paper over the winter and give it a try this season.

Incredible results with the paper. Even with smoker set at 225F, the chuck roasts got to the 160F mark relatively quickly. Wrapped them and could tell the temp climb had slowed. But the paper began to gloss up with the juice from the fat breaking down. At 200F, took them off the smoker and into a 170F oven for 90 min to let them rest.

When unwrapped to slice for dinner, they were just the most incredibly juicy roasts ever. Thanks!

I purchased your rub and sauce RECIPES a while back and enjoy them a lot. Also enjoy the weekly news letters. Looking at the Related smoking recipes I seen…Smoked Corn Beef Brisket for St Pattys Day….
Now wouldn’t that be Pastrami??

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